Kopi Luwak

Life isn't just bird watching, golf and rocking gently in a dark corner....sometimes I need to work. This last week I was thinking of ideas for the annual Black box and was making a list of exotic, or do I mean stomach turning, foods that in certain parts of the world are seen as delicacies. This list included monkey brains, traditionally eaten straight from the skull. Birds nest soup, made from the saliva of swifts. Balut, which is a fertilized boiled egg containing the foetus of a duck or chicken, baby mouse wine, tuna eyeballs, live octopus and Rocky Mountain Oysters........young bull testicles.

Plenty of candidates there for consideration....but then I came across Kopi Luwak. This is the most expensive coffee in the world and yet is made from civet cat poo. The Asian Palm Civet eats the coffee cherries which then pass through its digestive system leaving just the beans. The droppings are collected, washed and roasted before being turned into something that people with too much money feel the need to buy. My box shows a palm civet delivering a fresh batch of droppings straight  to the coffee cup.....mmmm.